Nikki O’Neill, is an R&B/Americana singer-songwriter and guitarist based in Chicago and she will be releasing her third solo album, Stories I Only Tell My Friends via Blackbird Record Label on March 14, 2025 on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming.
Featuring eleven songs written by O’Neill, the album is co-Produced by the artist and Rich Lackowski, and it was recorded mostly live with her 5-piece band by John Abbey at Kingsize Sound Labs in Chicago. The album’s making was largely supported by the Illinois Arts Council, who chose O’Neill as one of their Creative Catalyst Grant recipients for 2025.
Written in 2023-2024, three years after O’Neill relocated to Chicago from Los Angeles, some of the songs on Stories I Only Tell My Friends “revolve around exclusion, uprooting and her personal experiences with migration, while others describe the struggles of staying creative and maintaining a quiet sense of wonder in a fast-paced information-driven society.”
The Soul-inspired Americana sound that permeates Stories I Only Tell My Friends is very much a joint creation of O’Neill and the members of her band, including Rich Lackowski (drums, percussion, harmony vocals), Chris Corsale (most lead guitars, harmony vocals) and Teddy Myers (organ, piano, Wurlitzer and Rhodes), along with John Abbey and Chris Stanford on bass.
O’Neill says:
I brought my songs to the guys as rough recordings, we then arranged them together and everyone crafted their own parts. Chris (Corsale) is a true soul music fan, and it’s not easy to find guitarists who are. He’s built his song arranging chops on cats like Prince, Curtis Mayfield and Tony Maiden, and he also contributes great harmony vocal ideas. Teddy comes up with great keyboard hooks and colorful ways to set moods and build energy in a song, while Rich creates the tastiest drum fills and dynamic transitions, and really makes an effort to get the feel right.
Initially, I was scared to record a new album after relocating to Chicago, since everyone involved in the project would be new people except Rich. As a band, we’d performed shows with my previous material, but we hadn’t worked on any new songs yet. But there was such an immediate communal spark once we started, and the guys put their hearts into these songs. A lot of enthusiasm was felt at the studio sessions, and John was an awesome recording engineer who brought out the best in us. He also mixed the majority of the record, and helped us out by contributing great bass parts.
